You can contribute to the Resident Program:
People from all over the world come to Upaya to
practice, serve, and learn. Upaya completely supports their presence
as they stay with us from three months to a year. Please support
this program.

We encourage you to come to all or several days of the retreat TRUE NOURISHMENT FROM THE BOUNDLESS FIELD led by Wendy Johnson and Sensei Beate Stolte. If you can't attend the full retreat, single-day attendance on Friday or Saturday is available for $75 per day.

There are new Upaya apps available for iPhone and Android cell phones. See Dharma Podcasts section for details and links. And don't forget the Upaya Bookstore spring sale that is on now.

At the end of this newsletter, you'll find Local Sangha Opportunities, a section dedicated to people who live in or near Santa Fe and who are interested in Upaya sangha events, including a Book Study Dinner group that meets twice a month, yoga with Keizan, and more.

For news about Roshi's recent teachings and her Upaya schedule for the rest of the year, please take a look at "Roshi's News" and "WEB LINKS." And be sure to check Sensei Beate Genko Stolte's schedule as well.

May you find inspiration — here and in your life — to enrich your journey.

Housing for Retreat Guests: Because of limited housing at Upaya, we are requesting that the extended community let us know if you are able to house retreat guests on a donation basis or by renting a room. Please contact Roberta registrar@upaya.org. We really appreciate your generosity.

Sensei Beate Genko Stolte's 2011 Teaching Schedule with Links

Information and registration links for each program are listed below. Or you can click here for a link to Upaya's entire 2011 calendar._________

Roshi Joan's News and Upcoming Teachings and Travels with Links

Roshi is in retreat at the Refuge, until she travels to the east coast for Eve Ensler's birthday, Stephen Weiss' memorial, Buddist teacher meeting at Garrison, and Mind and Life Summer Research Institute at Garrison. Time for Roshi's inbreath in the altitudes.

"This compelling, brave, and wise book draws from a lifetime of remarkable work with people at the end of life."—Andrew Weil, MD

"Joan Halifax has a knack for straight talk and sublime insight—a no-holds-barred approach to life's greatest challenge, dying well. This book beckons to those who dare, and those who care; it's a profound and practical guidebook to the inevitable final dance." —Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence

Roshi Joan and three close friends, John Madison, Lola Long, and Brother John, made a remarkable Pilgrimage to Mt. Kailash in 1987. They hitchhiked across the Tibetan plateau where Roshi Joan did a retreat in a cave north of Lake Manasarovar. She and her friends circumambulated Mt. Kailash and then hitchhiked back across the plateau. Watch the video here — this is an extraordinary film. Enjoy!

CONNECT WITH ROSHI

Roshi's interest in social networking reflects her early work in anthropology and her Buddhist vision of interconnectedness. Photos

Dharma Talks: The Upaya bookstore has a number of Roshi's dharma talks on DVD. Please call the front office for titles and ordering, 505-986-8518, or email upaya@upaya.org

Tibet: The Chinese filmmaker Kam Sung has made a fascinating and visually poetic account of Roshi Joan in Tibet. A high-resolution version on DVD is now available from Upaya. Email at upaya@upaya.org or call 505-986-8518 to order. See exceptional video of Roshi in Eastern Tibet done by Kam Sung: https://www.createspace.com/267427 to purchase the film or click here to view A CONSTANT PILGRIM.

CD

Roshi Joan's 6-CD series on Being with Dying (from Sounds True Audio) is now available. To order, call 505-986-8518 or email: upaya@upaya.org

FEATURE ARTICLES

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The Buddha's Teachings about the Soul: Lewis Richmond

Vacchagotta — Vaccha for short — was one of the many religious wanderers whose spiritual dialogue with Gautama the Buddha is recorded in Buddhist scripture (the Aggi-Vacchagotta Sutta).

Vaccha was full of questions, particularly about the soul. The soul — or atman in the language of ancient India — was thought at the time to be the eternal aspect of the human personality, one that would transmigrate and be reincarnated lifetime after lifetime.

Vaccha had other metaphysical questions, too. He wanted to know whether the universe was finite or infinite, whether it was eternal or not eternal, whether an enlightened person like the Buddha would be reborn or not, and especially whether the soul existed or did not exist.

To each of Vaccha's questions the Buddha would not give a definitive answer. Whatever Vaccha asked, the Buddha would reply, "No," or "That does not fit the case, Vaccha." As the dialogue proceeded, Vaccha became more and more irritated, finally asking, "Well, has the Venerable Gautama any opinion on anything?"

To this the Buddha replied, "The term 'opinion,' Vaccha, has been discarded by [me]." He went on to explain that he understood the soul, or atman, not through logic or opinion, but through his direct experience of meditation. From this experience he concluded that the seemingly singular, permanent self or soul was actually composed of five ever-changing components, which he called skandhas, or "heaps." These five aggregations are form (the material world of the senses), feelings, perceptions, emotions and consciousness. Together, these five create the illusion of a fixed identity and continuous self. It is our clinging to this fixed self that creates all our unnecessary suffering this world. That is what the Buddha taught.

This is basic Buddhist doctrine, explained in detail in many Buddhist textbooks, such as Walpola Rahula's "What The Buddha Taught," or the more contemporary "A Path With Heart" by Jack Kornfield. But the full complexity and subtlety of how the Buddha taught is not so easily understood. In some sermons, the Buddha seems to acknowledge the existence of a soul. In others, he seems to deny the soul. And still others (as here in his replies to Vaccha), he declines to say one way or the other. In reading through all the many sermons of the Buddha, it seems that he adjusted his teachings to the needs and capacities of his listeners.

The translation of the Aggi-Vacchagotta Sutta which I am using here is from "The Buddha: His Life Retold" by Robert Allen Mitchell — a book with its own compelling story. Mitchell (1917-1964) studied graduate astronomy at Harvard, but due to the early death of his father he could not pursue a career as a scientist. Later on he became fascinated with the teaching of the Buddha, taught himself Pali (the language spoken in the Buddha's lifetime) and set about translating Buddhist texts — a solitary avocation that he practiced for the rest of his life. The manuscript of "The Buddha: His Life Retold" was found in his attic after his death and published in 1989; it is one of the best summations of the Buddha's basic teachings that I know. It is now technically out of print, but not too hard to find.

The dialogue between Buddha and Vaccha continues on the subject of the soul and its purported rebirth:

Vaccha asks, "But Reverend Gautama, where is the person ... reborn?"

"To say that he is reborn¸Vaccha, does not fit the case," replied the Buddha.

"Then he is not reborn?"

"To say that he is not reborn does not fit the case."

"Then he is neither reborn or not reborn?"

"To say that, Vacchagotta, does not fit the case."

In the same way the Buddha continues to reply "that does not fit the case" to each of Vaccha's queries.

Finally, in complete exasperation, Vaccha said,

"Venerable Gautama, have you nothing to say about the existence of the soul? Does the soul exist?"

At these words Gautama was silent.

"How is it, Venerable Gautama? Is there no such thing as the soul?"

Gautama was again silent.

What are we to make of this teaching? Why won't the Buddha say one way or the other? How can we trust a religious teacher who won't answer our questions, who remains silent when we implore him to respond? Do we, like Vaccha, walk away in confusion and bewilderment?

As Vaccha turns to go, the Buddha calls out to him, "Vaccha, this teaching ... is profound, subtle, hard to see, hard to comprehend, beyond the sphere of mere logic, to be understood only by the wise."

Indeed. This sermon about Vacchagotta is the precursor of many later strains of Buddhist teaching, including the Middle Way school of Nagarjuna (a key component and source of Tibetan Buddhist philosophy), as well as Zen.

Throughout Buddhist history, there are many recorded dialogues like the one between Buddha and Vaccha. Students of Zen will be familiar with the story ("Blue Cliff Record" Case 55) of Master Tao Wu and his disciple Chien Yuan. Master and student were paying a condolence call to the family of a recently deceased person when Chien Yuan suddenly rapped on the coffin and exclaimed, "Alive or dead?"

The master calmly replied, just as the Buddha did to Vaccha, "I won't say."

All the way home Chien Yuan kept after his teacher. "Alive or dead?" he kept repeating.

The teacher's answer was always the same: "I won't say."

Those not familiar with the Buddhist world-view may find this story, like the previous one about Vaccha, confusing and frustrating. They may think, "Why won't the teacher say? The corpse is obviously dead. He should just say so!"

But the whole truth is not so simple. At the heart of the Buddha's teaching is something not graspable by intellect alone, not expressible in words alone, not comprehensible by logic alone. This "something" Buddhists called prajna, or "transcendent wisdom," and it is the beating heart of the Buddhist Path — the inner source of compassion and the Buddha's message of liberation from suffering.

And why should it be otherwise? Many of the most important aspects of our life cannot be grasped by the intellect or put into words. Consider love. We can say "I love you," but those are mere placeholder words for something we can't really describe or explain. And yet our love for spouse, partner or children may be our greatest treasure. We don't know love through books or words, or by asking people to define what love is. As Forrest Gump says, "I may not be a smart man, but I know what love is." We apprehend love directly. When we love, we just know.

And so it is with Buddhist wisdom teachings. When Buddha said to Vaccha, "That does not fit the case," or when Tao Wu said to Chien Yuan, "I won't say," these answers are not actually designed to obfuscate, confuse or conceal. They are just honest responses pointing to a deep truth that — like love — lies deep in the inexpressible core of the human heart.

Residents wearing protective clothing and holding items they recovered from their homes walk back to a bus in Namie, Fukushima Prefecture, on May 26. (Mainichi)

NAMIE, Fukushima — Residents of areas located in the 20 kilometer no-entry zone around the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant were taken to their homes to retrieve items and mourn lost loved ones on May 26.

In Namie, 111 people from 63 households returned. It was the first time that residents of this town, which took heavy tsunami damage along its coast, had been able to return since the nuclear accident.

According to the Namie municipal government, for 52 residents aged 18 to 75, the primary reason they returned was not to collect items from their homes, but to mourn their lost loved ones.

Incense burners for those lost to the disaster were set up in three areas of the town, and the chief priest of an old, local temple called Daishoji read sutras, Buddhist garb draped over his protective clothing. Mourning returnees put their hands together silently, and some left offerings of flower bouquets, letters, or alcohol and other favorite foods and drinks of the departed.

Masao Anzai, 70, and his wife Chieko, 71, returned to their home here, but say that nothing was left but the foundations, and they weren't able to recover anything. They said one of their relatives is confirmed dead, and two are still missing.

A total of 171 people from 95 households in the towns of Namie and Futaba participated. Five people in Namie complained of minor dehydration symptoms, but no one had to be sent out for emergency medical attention or to be decontaminated of radioactive material.

Another round of temporary returns was to be held on May 27 for Namie, Futaba, and Minamisoma.

The ceremony will be broadcast live online and updates will be posted to Facebook. The Memorial Day observance culminates with a traditional Japanese lantern floating ceremony honoring those lost to war, health and natural disasters and serving as a symbolic prayer for a harmonious and peaceful future for all.

Among the 40,000+ expected guests and participants are Hawaii Governor, Neil Abercrombie, and Honolulu Mayor, Peter Carlisle. The head priest of Shinnyo-en's more than 1 million worldwide members, Her Holiness Shinso Ito, will conduct official rite of remembrance and honoring of the departed. The ceremony includes performances of Taiko drumming, HAPA Hawaiian music performers, Halau Hula O Kamuela hula dancing and a traditional Hawaiian choir performance. The ceremony is free of charge and open to the public.

Participants in the Lantern Floating Hawaii ceremony release about 3,000 glowing lanterns into the Pacific Ocean. Each lantern is constructed in advance by volunteers, and participants are encouraged to write their remembrances, memories and prayers on the lanterns. The lanterns are floated into the ocean, offering a beautiful and moving visual to observers, and are later collected and recycled.

"We hope that Lantern Floating Hawaii allows people to experience a feeling of warmth, joy, loving kindness, and compassion, whether they participate from shore or view it around the world through the media," said Roy Ho, Executive Director of the Na Lei Aloha Foundation, which organizes the annual event.

In Japan, lantern floating ceremonies are traditionally held to conclude the Obon Festival, a period of respect for ancestors. Lantern Floating Hawaii was brought to Hawaii by Shinnyo-en Buddhists to coincide with the American custom and tradition of honoring fallen soldiers for Memorial Day. The first Lantern Floating Hawaii ceremony was held in 1999, and every year the event has grown in popularity and attendance in response to positive feedback from the community and demand from more visitors to participate.

About Shinnyo-en: Shinnyo-en is a Buddhist denomination originally established in Japan. It is, first and foremost, a place for Buddhist training, in which all people regardless of age, gender, nationality, or religious background can cultivate their innate buddha nature, the kernel of enlightenment existing in all beings. Shinnyo-en held the first Lantern Floating Hawaii in 1999 and created the Na Lei Aloha Foundation in Honolulu in 2004 as the primary organizer of the annual event.

Dharma in the Dirt: about Wendy Johnson, by Patricia Leigh Brown

Wendy Johnson will be teaching at Upaya June 2-5, TRUE NOURISHMENT FROM THE BOUNDLESS FIELD along with Sensei Beate Genko Stolte. Single day attendance available at $75 per day. Click here.__________

MUIR BEACH, Calif. Her garden is near the Green Gulch Farm Zen Center, where she lived for 25 years.

AS a proudly Birkenstocked Zen gardener, Wendy Johnson can mindfully muster up affection for many of the earth’s species, with the possible exception of persimmon-devouring gophers.

But poison hemlock holds a special place in her heart.

Without the presence of this pernicious carrot look-alike, a potent vertigo-inducing poison that when ingested can cause death, she reasons, her garden would be all cloying lilac- and lily-scented perfection — boring, in short. The innocent-looking malevolent weed, which she allows to flourish for its capacity to draw rich minerals from the soil for compost, “gives the garden its punch,” she said, “snapping me back to my senses.”

Like her beloved hemlock, Ms. Johnson has deep taproots in California. Her own garden, bordered by a mountain creek with a view of the Pacific Ocean, lies down the road from the Green Gulch Farm Zen Center, where she helped pioneer the concept of organic gardening in the United States. Now the farm’s unofficial gardener emeritus, she lived at Green Gulch for 25 years, marrying, raising her two children and growing produce for Greens Restaurant, which was founded by the Center in 1979.

Long before Michael Pollan and Barbara Kingsolver wrote best-selling books about eating foods grown locally, Ms. Johnson, with a long-necked English watering can perpetually in hand, was cultivating an awareness of how lettuce grown au naturel can also feed the soul.

“You should taste this place,” she said, offering a visitor dried lemon verbena tea from the garden, her wide eyes bringing to mind a surprised lemur.

It is a cliché to say that gardening is meditative. But few have meditated as long and as earnestly as Ms. Johnson, who arrived at “the Gulch” with a sweaty Kelty backpack in 1975 after trekking much of the way from Tassajara, a rugged Zen outpost in the Ventana Wilderness. In her new book, “Gardening at the Dragon’s Gate: At Work in the Wild and Cultivated World” — part memoir, part Sunset Magazine sitting on the floor mindfully eating a raisin in the zendo — she ponders such questions as whether it’s O.K. for life-embracing Buddhists to crush snails (ask forgiveness first) or to trap gophers (breathe deep, then fence instead).

For Ms. Johnson, who occasionally waters the Buddha statue in her greenhouse to, as she says, “bring him to life a little bit,” gardening is about far more than Gravenstein apple trees or David Austin heirloom roses. It is to literally know “the heart and mind of your place,” and in so doing, to know your own heart and mind as well. “I am often most alert and settled in the garden when I am working hard, hip deep in a succulent snarl of spring weeds,” she writes. “My mind and body drop away then, far below wild radish and bull thistle, and I live in the rhythmic pulse of the long green throat of my work.”

Her looks betray her place: an unapologetic 60, Ms. Johnson has earthmother-y white hair, liver spots, knee socks and gnarly rose-scratched hands that horrify her two fashionable younger sisters in New York and Los Angeles. (“We’d look like you if we didn’t take care of ourselves!” they tell her — lovingly, she insists.)

Her primer on meditation and gardening is similarly steeped in northern California, a place where, since the 1960s, cultivation of the land and the self have been intertwined. Less widely known than Chez Panisse or the zen center’s own restaurant, Greens, the farm has influence that has nevertheless extended far beyond its terroir, a fertile dragon-shaped swath of what was once compressed ocean bottom at the foot of Mount Tamalpais.

From it germinated a movement toward “conscious eating and conscious growing, linked with the ethic of taking care of the land,” said Randolph Delehanty, a San Francisco historian. The organic Buddhists, led by Ms. Johnson; her husband, Peter Rudnick; and two influential teachers, Alan Chadwick and Harry Roberts, were “among the first people to take the idea of stewardship of the land and make a lifestyle out of it,” said Fred Bové, the former education director for the San Francisco Botanical Garden Society.

As a gardener, Ms. Johnson combines the conventional and the not-so. She grows roses and apple trees but also advocates compost and manure teas to boost the immune systems of plants (add 2-3 cups well decomposed compost or live manure per gallon of water; steep for 3 days). A columnist for Tricycle, the Buddhist magazine, she occasionally lapses into the woo-woo in the book, defining “inter-being” as “looking mindfully at broccoli and beet plants” and knowing that you are all one.

In her own garden, which she describes as “wild and bestial,” a hot tub deemed ugly on the deck is concealed by tangles of jasmine, narcissus and other plants, including several opium poppies. “The bees love them,” she observed of the poppies. “They’re medicating themselves right and left.”

The hot tub overlooks a pond filled with rainwater where otters occasionally do the backstroke and frogs make chirping sounds at night (she holds the phone over the pond to comfort her daughter, Alisa, a freshman at Bard, when she is homesick). Ms. Johnson meditates daily here, sitting on the cushion she stores beneath the living room sofa, where the cat sleeps (“stray cats target Buddhist households,” she said).

Written in longhand over 13 years, the book, her first, published by Bantam, hints at but does not fully reveal Ms. Johnson’s own circuitous path. She and Mr. Rudnick have lived “off campus” since 1998, when she inherited enough money to “move out into the world,” she said. Though she lives “one rung out” from the farm, as she puts it, she continues to teach gardening and meditation and serves as a mentor to young apprentices. She shares her home with her husband and their friend Mayumi Oda, a Zen silk screen artist, who also spends time in Hawaii.

The decor of her home is a heady mix of votive-lit Buddhist altars and moon calendars combined with schoolmarmish English teacups and other heirlooms from her grandmother’s house on Mirror Lake in Lake Placid. She grew up in Westport, Conn., the daughter of an independently wealthy, politically involved theater producer and a “wild gambler” mother who spent much of her time in Manhattan teaching bridge at the Regency Club and gambling at the Cavendish Club. (On Fridays she would say, “See you Monday”).

She and her sisters, Deborah, a New York fashion designer, and Sally, an actress in Los Angeles, were raised with a French governess they called Nanny (yes, “Eloise” was her favorite book).

Her parents divorced when Ms. Johnson was 13, and she divided her time between Westport and Manhattan, where her father “kept clothes so we could go to the theater,” including a turquoise and gray houndstooth suit with patent leather shoes. Both parents have died, but she remains close to her stepmother, Sandy Johnson, the author of “The Book of Tibetan Elders.”

A photograph of her in a satin dress on her 10th birthday at Sardi’s hangs on the wall. “I remember my father telling me, ‘I have the best present for you,’ ” she said. “I thought it was a horse. Instead, it was tickets to the New York Yankees.”

Her father told her it was “really not conscionable” to go to college — she should be out protesting. But Ms. Johnson eventually wound up at Pomona. Like many young seekers, she responded to the tumult of the Vietnam era by fleeing, spending her junior year in Israel, where, in 1972, she met her first “root teacher,” Soen Nakagawa Roshi. A year later, she arrived at the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center near Big Sur, where people walked around in black robes chanting in Japanese. “I felt I was making the most relevant decision,” she said, “because the world didn’t make sense to me.”

A fellow pilgrim was Annie Somerville, now the executive chef of Greens, with whom Ms. Johnson frequently collaborates on the “eating-garden relationship,” including the cookbook “Fields of Greens” (Ms. Johnson is also an adviser to the Chez Panisse Foundation’s Edible Schoolyard project at the Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School in Berkeley). At Tassajara, Ms. Somerville recalled, Ms. Johnson insisted on planting comfrey, “a deeply mucilaginous plant with furry leaves that helps coagulate blood and tastes absolutely revolting.”

She felt profoundly disoriented upon leaving Tassajara, with its dry porous soil, for foggy Green Gulch, where she and Mr. Rudnick would get married and eventually plant their children’s placentas beneath a now-flourishing crabapple tree. Her homesickness was lessened only when she stumbled upon a huge wild red rose growing on a crest of the headlands, perhaps left by a long-gone rancher, a “north star” plant that emotionally anchored her by reminding her that she was on well-loved land.

She takes stock of such touchstones, finding Zen perspectives even in compost. On a cold and windy New Year’s Eve last year, she and Mr. Rudnick headed out to the compost heap with five shopping bags full of outtakes from her book, “much of it purple prose,” she said.

She placed the discarded manuscripts on the pile, covering them with old weeds, hot manure and newly pulled poison hemlock to help them decompose. She put another batch of prose and weeds into a 55-gallon drum. Then, with lovingkindness toward herself, she lit it all.

The symposium, originally set to feature the Dalai Lama, brought researchers from UCLA’s Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior together with eminent Buddhist scholars for a two-hour conversation about their distinctive yet complementary understandings of compassion, creativity, mental flexibility and attention, as well as the role mindfulness meditation may play in cultivating these qualities.

For UCLA neuropsychologist Susan Bookheimer, research shows that the human brain comes wired for empathy — we "feel" another person’s physical or emotional pain via our brain’s mirror neuron system, which sends electrochemical messages that stimulate pain centers in our own cerebral cortex when we witness another person’s suffering.

For Buddhist scholar Robert Thurman, Buddhist practices going back thousands of years associate compassion with our sense of personal identity and our connection to others. The more agile and flexible our sense of self, the more open and empathic we are with fellow travelers in this human incarnation.

Both perspectives found voice at "Buddhism and Neuroscience: a Discussion on Attention, Mental Flexibility and Compassion" at Royce Hall on May 2, sponsored by the Center for Buddhist Studies, the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, and the International Institute. The symposium brought researchers from UCLA’s Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior together with eminent Buddhist scholars for a two-hour conversation about their distinctive yet complementary understanding of compassion, creativity, mental flexibility and attention, as well as the role mindfulness meditation may play in cultivating these qualities.

Sitting mid-stage as moderator between the two groups was Semel Institute Director Dr. Peter Whybrow. "You could think of it as the contemplative side (Buddhism) of the human brain and the empirical side (neuroscience)," he said. "Subjective and objective awareness come together in mindfulness."

From UCLA neuroscience were Bookheimer, Joaquin Fuster Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience; research psychologist Lobsang Rapgay, director of the clinical training program for mental health professionals at the Mindfulness Awareness Research Center; and Robert Bilder, the Michael E. Tennenbaum Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and Psychology.

Representing the Buddhist perspective were UCLA Distinguished Professor Robert Buswell, director of the Center for Buddhist Studies; Columbia University’s Robert Thurman, the Je Tsongkhapa Professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies; and Thupten Jinpa, a Tibetan Buddhist scholar and translator to His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama.

The Dalai Lama was originally set to attend the symposium, but he cancelled due to illness. Having a longtime interest in the convergence of spirituality and science, he has written, "I am convinced that a close collaboration between our two investigative traditions, Buddhism and science, can contribute significantly to developing an understanding of the complex inner world of subjective experience that we call the mind."

Bookheimer’s research on the brain’s hard-wiring for empathy and compassion has uncovered some troublesome findings: The ability to feel for others can be short-circuited in people who experience an overload of pain or other negative input.

"The brain is really an instrument of balance," Bookheimer said, "between emotional arousal and control." If, for example, a person repeatedly experiences situations that provoke fear, the brain protects itself by suppressing response. Over time, such a person becomes less sensitive to feelings – one’s own as well as those of others.

Meditation can help with this, said Thurman, by challenging the suppressive mechanisms and allowing the more discretional aspects of the brain to express themselves — in short, changing habits of mind. In Buddhism, he said, "The role of the mind is so important … in creating the brain."

Psychologist Rapgay, who was a Tibetan Buddhist monk for 18 years, has been exploring the therapeutic value of mindfulness for the relief of anxiety. Many of us, Rapgay said, have the mental habit of placing our "selective attention" on insidious worries like finances or health problems — worries that, in many cases, are more imaginary than imminent.

In anxiety," Rapgay said, "we narrow our focus on the perceived threat. The visual-processing portion of our brain focuses on the threat and sends signals to the amygdala, our brain’s ‘fight or flight’ response center."

Training the mind to broaden that narrow focus can help relieve anxiety, but no western therapies accomplish this, said Rapgay. He is exploring solutions in classical forms of mindfulness meditation, referring to ancient texts in which the Buddha taught the discipline of controlling attention.

Bilder, in his studies of creativity, examines what he calls the "action-perception cycle," a pattern of brain waves that cycle through every 300 to 400 milleseconds. "Creativity is at the edge of chaos," he explained, describing how this cycle occurs over and over again as a person perceives and processes new information and decides what new action, if any, to take in response. This creative process is a dualistic balance between novelty and utility, flexibility and stability — a duality, he noted, that has been illustrated throughout the ages in such concepts as the Taoist principle of yin yang.

Bilder’s concept of duality, said Buddhist scholar Jinpa, reminds him of the Dalai Lama’s teachings on two types of meditation practices: stabilizing meditation, which trains the mind to be calm and steadfast, and discursive meditation, which trains the mind to see things from different angles. Both mental disciplines come into play in creativity, he said. "Without stability, you don’t have the ability to apply your mind. But (if you are) too stable, you don’t have creativity, because creativity requires an ability to see things from a more impersonal perspective."

Buswell added that one form of discursive meditation is "something we would call visualization, where the person has realized that all structures of attention are in some sense relationally created, and there is no exact rigid thing." Using visualization, he said, "a person can creatively conceptualize a new type of self-image," the same way athletes will visualize a complex physical movement to prepare for competition.

"Many of the qualities of mind that we seek," said Jinpa, "can be harnessed through deliberate cultivation." Meditation can help us cultivate a new way of thinking or being and can also help us unlearn patterns that no longer serve us. Neuroscientists describe this, Jinpa noted, in the concept of "neuroplasticity," the brain's lifelong ability to reorganize itself by forming new neural connections as a result of new experience.

"Buddha didn’t have a clue about the brain," Jinpa said, "but he did have some understanding of how the process of transformation occurs."

How could the climate crisis become a great love story?Click here. Roshi Joan Halifax answers this question, shot at Upaya by director Velcrow Ripper. This video likely to be part of his upcoming feature doc (in progress) EVOLVE LOVE: Love in A Time of Climate Crisis, 2012.

UPAYA'S PROGRAMS

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Path of Service and Other Ways To Be at Upaya

Path of Service: Upaya is accepting applications for our Path of Service resident program, inviting practitioners to live and serve here from three months to a year or more. For more information and to apply click here or contact: pos@upaya.org

This is a wonderful way to give of your energy, deepen your Buddhist practice, and be in a thriving sangha. Enjoy and learn from the opportunity to receive zen teachings from Roshi Joan Halifax, Sensei Beate Genko Stolte and many other extraordinary teachers; hear weekly seminars and dharma talks; have dokusan with Sensei Beate, and experience the deep joy of living in community.

Personal Retreat/Guest Practitioner: Quiet, still, peaceful — Upaya is a special place in the fall with intimate rooms, kiva fireplaces, and breathtaking views. Spend some time here and find your own rhythm as a personal retreatant. To learn more about enjoying a peronal retreat at Upaya or coming as a guest practitioner, please contact Roberta at 505-986-8518 X12, registrar@upaya.org or click here.

Volunteer at our front desk, kitchen, garden or in housekeeping. Our volunteer program is intended for people who wish to contribute to Upaya and spend time working with the resident sangha; it is non-residential. For those who have the financial need, volunteer hours can be exchanged for retreat participation. In that case, a $10 hourly rate is credited for your work, and a maximum of 80% of the tuition may be earned and must be earned in advance of the event. Contact Roberta 505-986 8518, ext 12 or registrar@upaya.org.

Engaged Buddhism at Upaya

Upaya's service programs: caring for the sick and those in prison, compassionate action, and homelessness.

Metta Refuge Council: Tuesday, 9:45 a.m., a meeting for people who are ill, their caregivers, hospice volunteers, nurses, and those interested in exploring issues around sickness, aging, and death. Beginning at 11:20 am until nooon the group engages in contemplative writing as a way to explore what is present for people in the moment. No writing experience is needed. For more information, contact Susan Benjamin at ArtTherapy@aol.com. For details: http://www.upaya.org/action/caring.php

TheUpaya Prison Project serves prison residents at Santa Fe County Adult Detention Center and the Penitentiary of New Mexico. New volunteers are starting training to work "inside", teaching stress management through meditation, simple yoga, and confidential conversation in a protected place. More volunteers are needed to teach life skills and social skills. If this interests you, email Ray Olson at nanrayols@aol.com.

UCAN! is the Upaya Compassionate Action Network. Every season, UCAN highlights a social or political issue, gives background on that issue from a spiritual perspective, and suggests a way that you can translate your insights into skillful action. The current focus is immigration. To learn more, please click here.

Upaya is a member of the Interfaith Leadership Alliance of Santa Fe. Residents, Chaplaincy Students, and staff are collaborating with this critical community organization in addressing the needs of those who are homeless in our community. Last fall and spring we donated time and resources to the Winter Overflow Shelter located at the old Pete's Pets building on Cerrillos. And we are currently enthusiastically pursuing upcoming opportunities. As soon as we have more information, we will update Sangha members, who are all welcome to participate on Upaya's behalf how, where, and when possible. If interested, please contact Natalie Calia at Natalie@upaya.org or call 505-986-8518 ext 17.

Please help support our projects by making a donation to Upaya Zen Center for the Metta Program or Upaya Prison Project. We are deeply grateful for any donation.

Update on Metta Refuge Council: Susan Benjamin

Metta Council, begun in 1994, is a stable, compassionate and welcoming respite for people who are living with illness, grieving the loss of a loved one, and care-givers. New people are always welcome and join in throughout the year. As the years have passed, the group has broadened it's scope to embrace people who are in emotional and physical pain dealing with personal loss. Many who come to Metta Council also extend their compassion outside of the group, when needed, to help each other. It's an opportunity to share with an open heart and know that we have been heard and cared about. My week is always a little brighter thanks to the wonderful men and women who come to Metta Council. For more information about this council, see http://www.upaya.org/action/caring.php or contact Susan Benjamin at ArtTherapy@aol.com.

Update on the Prison Outreach Project: Ray Olson

This project currently has seven activities in place:

Weekly stress management class at the county jail

Weekly “Buddhist Studies” group for lower security level inmates at the local state penitentiary

Cell to cell visits in the higher security units of the state penitentiary

Meditation instruction for high security level inmates in one of the prison chapels

First, there are several “stakeholders” in the corrections system, as you are probably aware: the entrenched wardens and CO’s groups, the entrenched CO’s unions, the state legislators looking for ways to cut or balance the state budget, and the sad fact that most volunteer services seem to be under the direction of clergy who may have had little or no training in prison inmate rehabilitation.

Second, there are volunteers who want to convert inmates to their particular spiritual path. I have a deeply felt bias against this: one’s spiritual life is uniquely and intimately one’s own. You cannot have my spiritual path; and I cannot have yours. Each of us gathers tidbits we have learned along life’s way, and we meld them into whatever our own practice is. One of the things the Buddha taught was the power of self-reliance: that each of us is fundamentally our own teacher. We can use the teachings of a guru or a master, including Shakyamuni Buddha, but ultimately we put them all together ourselves and activate them.

Third, the inmates themselves, and the surroundings in which they find themselves, deeply affect the outcome of any planned teaching inside. Many of them have had indescribably poor (or no) parenting, often with abuse, violent and/or sexual. Having learned no survival skills in their families, they turn to drugs and alcohol, during the highs from which they do the unskillful things that lead to incarceration. Also, the jail inmates mostly have not yet even been sentenced, and hence do not have any real sense of being incarcerated nor of the enormity of their offense; as one of them has said, “It’s like being at camp”.

In the county jail we teach stress management (four weekly classes of basic meditation instruction, flavored with some emphasis on the importance of the being present in the immediate moment; then five weeks of anger management; and finally three weeks of restorative (healing) justice in which each participant takes full responsibility for his offence, explores feelings of remorse, and considers avenues of making amends to all parties injured. Our classes always include yoga and meditation besides the cognitive content just outlined.

Our “Buddhist Studies” for prison inmates includes the basic ideas, taken from the Pali canon, which we believe might actually have been taught by the Buddha (i.e., no frills); these are his unique teachings (not part of the Vedic world in which he lived nor added by later disciples or scholars), including the conditionality of all phenomena, the Four Noble Truths, the central role of mindfulness practice, and the power of self reliance. To this we add the 10 Grave Precepts, despite their compilation from the Vinaya some several hundred years after the Buddha’s death. Here also we teach yoga and meditation.

We do not proselytize. In a broad sense, we teach “life”: we offer lovingkindness with a firm hand, and we practice mindful listening. Because of all this, we receive copious expressions of affectionate gratitude from most of the inmates who participate.

At six week intervals we give out a certificate to each inmate who has participated in all preceding six sessions.

We have handouts for all the meetings, so the inmates have something to take away. We encourage practice on their own, but this is not too successful, given the crowding of the facility and the noise inside.

We have a constant influx of letters of inquiry from inmates incarcerated in prisons around the United States. To these we respond with a letter explaining our offering of meditation instruction, the “practice” vs. “faith” approach offered by Buddhism, and the basic teachings of the Buddha. We send in each reply a leaflet giving meditation instruction, another leaflet offering the basic teachings of the Buddha, and a copy of Thich Nhat Hanh’s talk to inmates at the Maryland State Prison.

The Catholic Archdiocese of Santa Fe operates a post-release mentoring program, Thresholds, in which we have been invited to participate. By the terms of a contract signed by both the inmate and pairs of mentors, the inmate meets with mentors once a week for six months, and then once a month for six months. This mentoring process facilitates the inmate’s re-entry into family and society.

Outcome studies for effectiveness of our efforts are nearly impossible to do, since it is impossible to track inmates following release. We do, however, have strong positive feedback from inmates as they engage in our courses or participate in our spiritual counseling program. We are very pleased with the feedback, and we listen carefully to suggestions for improving our work.

Upaya's Buddhist Chaplaincy Program

The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness of the interdependence of all these living beings, which are all part of one another, and all involved in one another. —Thomas Merton

Chaplaincy Program Website. Based on the work of the late Francisco Varela and His Holiness the Dalai Lama, this visionary two-year program brings together science, systems theory, practice, and humanism in a powerful way with Roshi Joan Halifax, Sensei Fleet Maull, Father John Dear, Rabbi Malka Drucker, Sensei Alan Senauke, and an exceptional faculty next year. For more info, see the program website or contact program director Maia Duerr at chaplaincy@upaya.org

Upaya Scholarship Fund

Your donation to The Upaya Scholarship Fund will provide students of all ages and backgrounds with the means to participate in our programs and retreats. Please help support those in need by contributing to the fund.

Throughout the year, we receive many requests for financial assistance and would love to be able to meet everyone’s needs. With your generous donation we will be able to reach out more.

Monetary donations can be made by phone, mail, or online. International donations can be made securely online using PayPal. By phone we accept cash, check, MasterCard, and Visa. Please click here to make a donation.

Thank you in advance for any assistance you can give!

Become a Member

Become a member online. Your membership gives so much to Upaya, and we in turn offer free podcasts, daily practice, teachings, our weekly newsletter, videos, and service to the homeless, those in prisons, and at the end of life. Become a member of Upaya and support all that happens in this unique place of practice.Your monthly donation will make a real difference in sustaining Roshi's work, Sensei Beate's teachings, and Upaya's existence.

RARE PAINTING AVAILABLE: Dancing Hotei by Fugai Ekun

This wonderful painting is by Fugai, the Patriarch of Zenga. Fugai was the first master to use art as a vehicle for Zen teachings. Like Bodhidharma, he spent much of his life in a cave. He used his art when he needed provisions. Fugai would hang a painting of Daruma or Hotei outside his cave. Villagers would take the paintings in exchange for rice and vegetables.

Surviving paintings by Fugai are extremely rare because they were subsequently hung in Japanese farmhouses and therefore subject to the ravages of weather and time. Master restorers in Sendai, Japan expertly restored this painting. It was sent from that workshop the day before the tsunami struck and thus miraculously survived.

The Buddhist scholar, John Stevens, who owns the painting, has written this about Fugai's inscription: “From what little remains of the inscription, we can tell it is the same one used on similar paintings of this subject. In a sense, all of us carry a bag of treasures (our innate Buddha-nature) but we too often fritter away the chance to realize that truth. However, if we make good use of that treasure, it increases in value day-by-day. Also, Zen does not have to be all discipline and intense practice; sometimes enlightenment can be fun.”

The words read:

If this bag is used clumsily it becomes lighter and lighter, But if it is used skillfully it becomes heavier and heavier! Fugai

This painting is available for the community to purchase. It would make a splendid addition to our own Dharma.

SANDOKAI Music and CD — Now Available Through Upaya

Music for vocal ensemble (mixed choir) on classical texts of Soto Zen Buddhism, in new English translations by Kazuaki Tanahashi, Joan Halifax, Taigen Dan Leighton and David Schneider. Dedicated to Roshi Joan Halifax and the Upaya Zen Center.

The music, was composed by Luc Nyushin De Winter (a Flemish composer and Zen monk), and was performed by Ensemble Polyfoon on November 26 and 27, 2010, Church of St.-Michiel, Amerikalei 165, 2000 Antwerpen; and November 28, 2010, 17.00, Church of Saint Martinus, 1547 Bever. Next performance is scheduled on Septmeber 4, in the Tibetan Buddhist Temple of Hoei, Belgium.

The CD (with 32-page color booklet in English/French/Dutch) is available for worldwide delivery on http://www.polyfoon.be/. If you join this group you will be informed about the evolution of the project, performances, recordings and so on. The CD is also available through Upaya Zen Center.

Please invite friends who might be interested — thank you for your support!

LOCAL SANGHA OPPORTUNITIES: Book Study Dinner Group, Yoga

Who: Whether you are a Buddhist scholar or just becoming aware of Dogen we truly welcome you with a deep bow…

When: The second and fourth Wednesdaysof each month

Next Gathering and Time: June 8, 7 pm (after the Dharma Talk)

Where: Upaya House

Bring: A self-contained dinner and your Beginners Mind

We focus on the works of Eihei Dogen. Our first book entitled, The Wholehearted Way, is a translation of Dogen’s Bendowa, one of the primary texts on Zen practice written in 1231 A.D. The commentary by Kosho Uchiyama Roshi contributes further in resourcing Dogen’s teachings. Quote from this book:

It is important to see both delusion and enlightenment with one eye. Both delusion and enlightenment are the scenery of life. We should sit on a foundation from which we can view them equally.

The Book Study Dinner Group is an on-going gathering on the second and fourth Wednesdays of every month. For more information call Ann-Marie McKelvey at 505-989-3374.